


#2

by AceOnMain (Sangrylah)



Series: Itachi's Daycare For Maladjusted Children [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Itachi is a good big brother, because canon is fucked up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:06:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26940367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sangrylah/pseuds/AceOnMain
Summary: A conversation. Itachi crouches down and is a badass. Those two qualities might or might not be related.Reading of the first work in the series recommended for understanding.
Series: Itachi's Daycare For Maladjusted Children [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1965778
Comments: 7
Kudos: 53





	#2

Big blue eyes stare at him with suspicion and wariness. That’s valid. He’d probably be suspicious if he had been kidnapped, too.

He  _really_ hasn’t thought it through, has he? Well.

Well. Hum. ANBU know how to improvise. They’ll be fine… Probably.

He just. He just couldn’t leave a child like this. Taking Sasuke away to save him and abscond him from everything happening, how could he abandon another child to the same fate? Itachi has two arms for a reason. Two arms, two children. Logic.

He crouches on one knee to look less intimidating. Sasuke doesn’t like it when adults tower over him and look down on him as if he worth all their attention, and he can’t imagine that this child would like it either. The boy talks before he can.

“You should let me go.”

Probably, yes. He won’t. He says so. The child scolds.

“People will come for me and they will hurt you. You should let me go.” A quick glance at the second child sleeping in his captor’s arms. “And him too.”

Itachi doesn’t know whether it is meant to be a warning or a threat, but in any case: “I won’t. Bad things will happen to him if I give him back. Bad things already happened.”

Blue eyes stare at him. Itachi has always thought that Sasuke had the biggest eyes, but somehow those seem even bigger, even more fragile. The boy swallows. “Bad things? Like… like being pushed and yelled at?”

“Yes.”

The boy shuffles a bit. “And… not having anyone to blow on the ouchies?”

Dead people don’t blow on ouchies. “Yes.”

The kid bites his lip, deep in thought. Itachi rotates his arms to stretch his muscles and waits.

Finally, the boy nods decisively. “Okay. You can keep him.”

It’s not like he could’ve stopped Itachi, jinchūriki or not, but it simplifies things. “Thank you. Can I keep you, too?”

The kid suddenly goes very, very still. “Me?”

“Yes.”

“But no one wants me,” he whispers. “Everyone always tells me to go away.”

Itachi wants to kill something. Several someones. “I do. I want you.”

“You do?”

“Yes.”

One little step towards him. His eyes are so blue and so big and Itachi is fucked. “Really?”

“Really.”

The kid swallows and locks his jaw. “The animal people are going to come,” he says flatly.

It is a spectacularly effective deterrent. No one wants to be ANBU target. The kid might be young – younger than Sasuke, perhaps – but he is no fool. He is being brave, and reasonable, his little chin raised and his eyes staring defiantly at Itachi, because he knows that no one will want a kid that ANBU will come after, but his small, chubby hands are curled so tight in the hem of his unclean shirt that his knuckles are white with it and his whole frame is tense and still. The hope in these big, big eyes makes Itachi’s ribcage hurt. The kid  _wants_ this. But ANBU is a spectacularly effective deterrent.

For anyone else.

He unfurls his hand, wrapped around Sasuke's leg, to offer it to this child who’s trying so hard to be _sensible_. “I am very strong. I can handle the animal people.” He hopes he won’t have to kill them, but he can. He will. “I don’t want to give you back. I want you to come with us.”

The kid gasps and violently bites his lip as his eyes fill up with tears. Itachi waves his hand.

“Come here.”

The boy barrels into him, somehow mindful of Sasuke still unconscious, and buries his face into Itachi’s shoulder. He wraps his arm around the child and pets his hair, the same way he did for Sasuke before his brother decided he was too old for it.

“Shhh, it’s okay, Naruto. I want to keep you. Will you come with us?”

Naruto cries noisily in his shoulders, his whole body shaking with the strength of his emotions and gives frantic little nods. “Yes, yes. Wanna stay. Please please please  _please_ .”

Itachi is never going to give this child back.

He might’ve lost his clan, his family, his best friend, his beliefs, his trust in people and faith in his village, his name and his village but he still has  _this_ .

Dead children are quiet, but Naruto is sobbing uglily in his shoulder and Sasuke’s breathing catches somewhere in his throat with a little raspy noise.

Itachi is never going to give them back.

Might as he tries – and oh! how he tried! – Itachi cannot carry his whole clan on his back, his shoulders, his blood. He can, however, carry these two children. Itachi has two arms, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed this first baby!Naruto appearance!  
> This will be updated depending on my and my beta's schedules so I suggest you subscribe if you want to read more.


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